Out-sourcing again

The NY Times this morning had a fairly long expose on the miserable state of police training in Afghanistan documented in a recent joint report from the DOD and the State Department. The article noted that police training is outsourced largely to DynCorp, which is also one of the principle companies involved in training Iraqi police, to the tune of revenues of $1.1 billion.

Now, of course, we all know what a lousy job is being done in Iraq, so it was no surprise that we are getting the same result from the same company in Afghanistan. I decided to look into who runs DynCorp and came up with the name of its CEO, Stephen J. Cannon, among others. A quick Google of Cannon turned up the following article on DynCorp, which was also responsible for much of the government "assistance" to New Orleans in the Katrina catastrophe.:

As a journalist, I'm afraid I have to judge DynCorp not on the spin of its CEO but on its record. Here are just a few of the reasons for serious concern about DynCorp forces operating on US soil:

- DynCorp employees in Bosnia, where the company plays a major policing role, have engaged in organized sex-slave trading with girls as young as 12, and DynCorp's Bosnia site supervisor was filmed raping a woman. A subsequent lawsuit, filed by a company whistleblower, alleged that "employees and supervisors from DynCorp were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in] other immoral acts." The whisteblower, with whom DynCorp eventually settled, "witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased." The company's initial response was to fire the whistleblowers. The employees involved in the sex ring were transferred out of the country. Some were eventually fired, although none were ever criminally prosecuted. One of the whistleblowers told Congress, "DynCorp is the worst diplomat our country could ever want overseas.''

- In Afghanistan, where DynCorp guards President Hamid Karzai, the company has a reputation for brutality and recklessness, including serious complaints from internationals of intimidation. It has even been rebuked by the State Department for its "aggressive behavior" in interactions with European diplomats, NATO forces and journalists. A BBC correspondent also witnessed one of the guards slapping an Afghan government minister.

- In Haiti earlier this year DynCorp bodyguards on the detail of interim president Boniface Alexandre beat at least two journalists trying to cover a presidential event. DynCorp has had a checkered past in Haiti, where it "trained" the national police force after the original coup against President Aristide, bringing several feared Tonton Macoutes leaders back into prominence.

- The company is facing a major lawsuit filed by 10,000 Ecuadoreans forced to live (and die) with the impact of DynCorp's toxic crop spraying, which it does in several Latin American countries, including Colombia, as part of Plan Colombia. Representative Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, charges that "DynCorp's employees have a history of behaving like cowboys." A leading Colombian newsweekly called them "lawless Rambos."

As DynCorp swallows up more lucrative government contracts by the week, some in Congress are raising questions. "Is it [the] policy of the US government to reward companies that traffic in women and little girls?" Representative Cynthia McKinney asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in March.

Using private military contractors like DynCorp in places like Afghanistan and Iraq allows the government greater secrecy and less transparency and accountability. The real question is: Why are these particular firms needed in the United States for what should be relief and reconstruction operations? The answer is that they are not, but their road to the lucrative contracts is paved with political connections and the offer to their employers of plausible deniability. Unfortunately, if recent history is any indicator, the damage from this cronyism could extend well beyond the taxpayers' pockets to the safety and security of the people of New Orleans and other cities unfortunate enough to encounter these private security forces.

Take the words of Brig. Gen. Karl Horst, deputy commander of the Third Infantry Division in charge of security in Baghdad. In September he said this of DynCorp and other security firms in Iraq: "These guys run loose in this country and do stupid stuff. There's no authority over them, so you can't come down on them hard when they escalate force.... They shoot people, and someone else has to deal with the aftermath. It happens all over the place."

It's good to know that we've got responsible people running things, isn't it?

I suppose it's no surprise that DynCorp's board has a number of high ranking retired military officers on it, is it?

I always thought that out-sourcing was supposed to bring business discipline and competitive efficiency to bear on what was otherwise wasted on internal bureaucratic chaos. Ha! Out of the frying pan and into the fire.